Earlier this year ASUS launched a pair of Chromebooks, and they also teased another product that would be launching later in the year. It was the Chromebit HDMI stick, and it's essentially a Chrome OS computer that you plug into the HDMI port on your monitor or television. ASUS thinks the Chromebit will be great for applications like digital signage, but pairing it with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse allows it to be used as a consumer Chrome OS computer as well. You can check out the Chromebit CS10's specs below.

ASUS Chromebit CS10

SoC

Rockchip RK3288-C
4 x Cortex A17 + Mali T764

RAM

2 GB LPDDR3

NAND

16GB NAND

Dimensions / Mass

123 x 31 x 17mm, 75g

OS

Chrome OS

Other Connectivity

2x2 802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0, HDMI 1.4, USB 2.0, DC-in

Price

$85

A combination of size and price means we're not going to be seeing something like an Intel Core i5 in an HDMI stick any time soon. Thankfully, Chrome OS tends to run pretty well even with minimal hardware power. At $85, the Chromebit CS10 comes with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of eMMC NAND, dual-band 802.11ac, and a Rockchip RK3288-C SoC. RK3288-C is a quad core Cortex A17 part paired with a Mali T764 GPU. The same SoC has actually shown up in some of ASUS's actual Chromebooks as well, so it's not surprising to see it in the Chromebit.

As with all HDMI sticks, you still need a separate power adapter because HDMI 1.4 can't supply nearly enough power for even such a smaller computer. Even with that, the Chromebit could still make for an interesting computer of sorts that can be taken anywhere in your pocket.

The ASUS Chromebit CS10 will cost $85, and it comes with a year of 100GB Google Drive space. It'll begin shipping today.

I was really disappointed when I read what OS this was going to run. I was hoping it would be a nice little Android TV stick. Who cares about another cheap kiosk stick? There are plenty of those already, most of them even run more fully-featured OSes. Reply